“Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”
Hebrews 111.
“Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”
Hebrews 111
There is one question people ask me more than any other. How did you do it? How did you hold to nonviolence when a pounding wall of vicious hate was pushing through you like waves of fire during the protests and sit-ins of the civil rights movement?
How was it possible to be cracked on the head with a night stick, left bleeding and unconscious on the trampled grass, and not raise your hand one time in self defense? How could you bear the clear hypocrisy of being arrested on trumped up charges and taken to jail for disturbing the peace when you were the one who was attacked and abused?
How could you survive the unanswered threats, the bombings, and murders of a lineage of people like Medgar Evers, Jim Lee Jackson, Andrew Goodman, James Cheney, and Michael Mickey Schwerner without holding any bitterness or anger?
The answer is simple. faith, faith has the power to deliver us all, even from the greatest harm.
The Family of William Thomas Daffron and Jessie Mae Hackleman Moved From Place to Place in Alabama during the Years The Family Worked As Tenant Farmers
An old envelope is my mother's effort to reconstruct the moves.
My mother's notes do not have a date. The envelope itself is postmarked 11 March 1983
Front of Envelope:
Back of Envelope:
Details:
Unfortunately, what I cannot yet add are the dates
This photograph dates to 1899 and shows my Grandfather and Grandmother Allen (Julius Henry Allen, Lillian Eremine McKinley) on their wedding day. Showing front and back of the card photograph. The notes were made by Lucille Allen
Back of photograph. No month/day has been determined for their 1899 marriage.
This was the second marriage for Julius. His first wife, Josephine Farmer (also known as Mary Josephine and Josie) died 11 May 1897.
Written by W. T. Daffron, my grandfather, of Millport Alabama, probably in 1932. It was the height of the Great Depression.
The Hayseeder’s Lament
What do you think
About the gink
And all this high-brow clan
Who congregate
And advocate
Bankhead’s reduction plan
We raise our cotton
For markets rotten
We freely will admit
But it’s a fact
This Bankhead Act
Don’t help a doggon bit
We plant the seed
And tend the weed
Side dress with guano
We plow and hoe
Keep on the go
No rest so help us Hannah
We work and sweat
Just fume and fret
And worry every day
Haul it to town
And with a frown
Give half the stuff away
We have to sign
On dotted line
At every turn we make
Then buy permits
And send remits
With that we can rake
We pay the ginner
The real winner
In this old game of chance
His biz is brisk
He takes no risk
Your see that at a glance
We count our dough
And hope to go
Right out and buy a shirt
Some calico
And thread you know
To make the wife a skirt
We heave a sigh
And almost cry
To find we’re in a pickle
A note past due
For 10-2-2
Don’t leave a blessed nickel
No shoes, no socks
No calico frocks
Nor just an old straw lid
Not even a hope
To buy a dope
Or candy for the kid
Can’t sell a cow
A pig or sow
A turkey, goose or guinea
Everyone broke
Their stuff in soak
Nobody’s got a penny
No money to spend
No one to lend
A penny on our note
All of us busted
No one trusted
To lead a billy goat
Everybody knows
We have no clothes
Our children unerfed
So tell us quick
What stunt or trick
We’ll pull to get some bread
_______
"Dope" was Daffron's term for medicine. Bankhead alludes to one of the New Deal's programs. It paid farmers to not plant some acreage in an effort to raise commodity prices.
